Wednesday, August 8, 2012

RWA and Blog Bounce!

As a special treat today, we have one of Omnific newest authors guest blog and telling us about her experience at RWA. So welcome Marian Vere!

A
few days ago I returned from the RWA conference held this year in California,
and besides from the grudge my feet are holding against me from overuse, it was
a perfectly amazing trip!

RWA,
or Romance Writers of America (which
Canadians can also join, by the way) is a nonprofit trade association for
writers of any facet of the romance genre. They provide news, classes,
promotional opportunities, and loads of other perks designed to advance
interests of the serious writer. Each year they hold a national conference in a
different location, where the more than 10,000 members, as well as non-member
writers can meet, learn, and hone the craft.

This
was my second year attending the conference, and if was even more amazing the
second time around. I was trying to come up with a way to tell you all about
it, but wasn’t sure how I would be able to cover such a huge event. Statistically,
people prefer reading lists over articles, and since I learned that little
tidbit at a blogging workshop at RWA, I figure what better place to apply it then
my RWA recap! So without further chit-chat, here we go…

First,
about the conference:

·Romance Writers
of America

32nd
Annual National Conference

July 24th
– 28th 2012

·Location:
Anaheim, CA at the Marriot Resort and Convention Center. Right next to
Disneyland, which is connected to California Adventure park, which has just
opened Cars Land, a whole section of park dedicated to the Cars movies! The whole
thing was a life-sized Radiator Springs! It was so cool! Umm… *ahem*… But I digress…

·11 Publisher
Sponsored Book Signings, with a total of more than 400 books, all free to
conference attendees

·A promotional
room where more than 400 authors displayed free promotional items for the
attendees to peruse and take

Next,
what I learned:

·The romance genre
sells above and beyond any other genre of writing, and continues to grow
exponentially each year, thanks in no small part to the e-reader. (No more
embarrassment about buying racy novels in stores. “God, what does the checkout boy think of me?!”)

·More than 20% of
all romance writers are men, most of whom write under a woman’s name. There
were several men signing book at this year’s conference.

·More than 25% of
all romance readers are men. (I know,
right!) This number also grows every year which is also thanks to the discretion
of the e-reader. (Yeah, I’ll take this
one. It’s um… for my wife…)

·The original title
of ‘Gone With the Wind’ was ‘Tote the Weary Load’,
and ‘Scarlet O’Hara’ was originally ‘Pansy O’Hara’

·Agent’s sign less than 1% of
the projects that cross their desks. (This
one I had already known, but it’s still mind blowing to think about.)

·More than 30% of published
authors, after publishing their first book, never write again. (And not because they made enough on their first
book to retire.)

·Agents and Editors do not
expect perfection, but they do expect to see your best.

·You should only pitch to
agents at appropriate times and never, ever,
follow an agent into the bathroom. (Yes,
this one might seem like a no-brainer, but I volunteered at several sessions of
the agent/editor pitch appointments, and yes, we had to physically stop a
pitching author from following an agent into the restroom. *facepalm*)

·Never send a query or
submission in to an agent or editor in a font color other than black. No pink,
no blue, no red. (Again, no-brainer,
right? Apparently not.)

·Nora Roberts—under that name
alone—has in print, right now more than 420 million copies of her books
worldwide. If you laid all the words in those books end to end at an 8pt. New
Times Roman Font (the average size for
one of her novels), you would have a line of text long enough to wrap
around the equator 8,558 times!

·I also learned the most
successful formats for author blogs, how not
to look in your author photos, how to write a back cover blurb that sells, what
character traits readers love—and which ones they are tired of, and got to meet
Lauren Willig, Nora Roberts, Kerrelyn Sparks, and Julia Quinn, just to name a
few.

·Last, but certainly not
least, I brought home $652.00 worth of brand new books, including hardbacks, trades,
mass-market, and even a few e-books! 61 in all. Yay!

Too bad
you don’t have all day, as there is so much more I could tell you! However, I
know you don’t, so we’ll just suffice it to say that this year’s RWA National
Conference was a fantastic, enlightening, and inspiring event—as it is every
year—and I can’t wait for Atlanta in 2013!

Hope to
see you all there!

And Marian was nice enough to support all her Omnific family setting up some great opportunities for us - check out these pictures!

Thanks so much Marian!! Glad you had a great time and that you shared with us. And now it's time to BOUNCE!!

Here's how this works:

If you
are an author, click on "Get the Code Here" to get the link. Copy and
paste that link in your blog post. Then hop right on and add your blog
url to get added to the list.

If you are a reader, you get to bounce from blog to blog and meet some great new authors and maybe find some new books to read.